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I’ve got a lot of questions for Old Sol, but I have to take them slowly, easily.

Me: So, what’s the deal on all this Middle East extremism? That seems to be escalating.

Old Sol: Some celestial object deities have a delicate touch, some don’t. I’m more into playing Chopsticks than a piano sonata. I get up on the wrong side of the bed and things happen. French Revolution. Russian Revolution. No harm intended. It just happens.

Me: So all these Muslims and Zionist extremists are fired up because you let one of your moods get away from you?

Old Sol: Partly. Of course, I didn’t tie up some loose ends a while back. I had it on my list to do something decisive so those people weren’t running around thinking they’re Chosen People. But other things came up and it slipped my mind.

Me: But what about those Muslims? That whole thing seems to be on the upswing?

Old Sol: You’ve got to understand. Back then things were chaotic. No sooner got the Roman Gods put to sleep and the Jews scattering than Christians and Muslims popped up and started fighting one another. It isn’t as though putting out fires is all I have to do. I’ve got these other planets, moons, comets, asteroids to keep doing their jobs. And that damned Jupiter.

Me: Jupiter?

Old Sol: I swear, between Jupiter and Saturn it’s a wonder I find time to do anything else. All those moons and rings, posturing and strutting, throwing out magnetic fields from hell to breakfast.

Me: So what are you going to do with the Zionists and Muslims?

Old Sol: They’re just going to have to take care of one another for a while. I’ve got this hormone thing. You people in the US are the new Chosen People, but I think you’d be better off staying out of it. You’re the best I’ve got, and I’d like to see some land left down there people can live on once all the ice melts. Not much chance of that in the Middle East or downwind from the north Pacific.

Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read. Apologies in advance to those of you who never saw or read Deliverance.

One of the problems that comes from ten generations of intermarried first cousins running the country is they all begin to think it’s about Dueling Banjos. They start believing it’s perfectly natural Bobby’s over there squealing like a pig. Nobody wants to rock the canoe.

But at the moment the reason Bobby’s over there in the White House squealing like a pig is that Saudi Arabia and their cousins in Israel are pressuring the hell out of him to bomb their other cousins in Syria. Same as they’re doing over there in Congress where they understand all about squealing like pigs for the White House, Israel, Saudi Arabia, anyone with the money to buy a quickie.

It’s all become a habit. Nobody 75 years ago would have dreamed there’d come a time when the President of the US could believe he could bomb the bejesus out of anyone he wanted to anytime he wanted to without anyone raising an eyebrow. Nobody would have believed US Presidents could take the country into a series of endless wars without consulting Congress. Nobody would have believed any president could believe he could do it and get by with it.

But that all changed with a lot of other things. And now we’ve got a guy in the White House hysterical because he wants to give a war and nobody’s willing to come. Standing on one leg, then the other saying he’s going to get permission from Congress, then saying he doesn’t have to. Saying he’s the only one needs to pick the tune for all of us.

And all those hydrocephalic banjo players over in Congress listening to Israel lobbyists handing them nice stuff under the table, Saudi Arabian lobbyists giving them free trips to Tahiti and porn stars in their hotel rooms to help them remember where their loyalty belongs.

Meanwhile, the world’s died laughing and decided they’ve had enough of US Presidents and their big-headed advisors telling them who needs the bejesus bombed out of them. Which puts Bobby into a hell of a fix.

Bobby knows if he doesn’t do what Israel and Saudi Arabia tell him to do, he’s got a Vice President who will. He knows he can be LBJed same as Kennedy was. LBJed and J. Edgar Hoovered by one of the packs of goons and snipers he’s helped put into place on all the rooftops. He never figured he’d be the one in the crosshairs he helped create.

Backward South American countries gave right-wing death squads a bad name during the last half of the 20th Century. Naturally nobody wanted to be identified with anything backward Mexicans in Chile or Argentina did, so for a while the United States People In Power tried to find lower profile alternatives to accomplish the same goals.

But the truth is that throwing the baby out with the bathwater just narrows the options more than is required.

Henry Ford, the US mining industry, the US lumber industry, and during the Vietnam War, the US government all used right-wing death squads for the greater good of all. The industries would have had a lot more difficulties busting the unions if it hadn’t been for right-wing death squads. The US government couldn’t have killed off all the Black Panthers without them. The Vietnam War protests would have gone on and on ad infinitum if the Ohio National Guard’s right-wing death squad hadn’t opened up on those students at Ohio State and showed them what-for.

Bill Clinton and Janet Reno ran up a trial balloon at Waco, then again at Ruby Ridge in an attempt to restore the usefulness of right-wing death squads, clean up the image. But for reasons not fully understood, the practice was then dropped.

Hopefully this guy in there now will examine the benefits the US has reaped in the past through the use of right-wing death squads and see it’s time to bring it back for the greater good of all.

Right wing death squads aren’t a solution to every problem, as Bill and Hillary Clinton and Janet Reno demonstrated. But that only means they didn’t use the right tool for the right job.

Right-wing death squads worked admirably for Henry Ford and the mining and lumber industries. They worked great in South America, despite the bad press. And history proves they can work well again in the United States if properly applied.

When I got out of the Army, summer 1964, I had a lot of ideas about my bright future. Shopped around the Portales area for a while and found a quarter-section cotton farm I thought briefly I’d buy and become a starving-to-death farmer, which fell through. Worked meanwhile, for Abe Ribble at his cement operation, and applied for the Peace Corps, knowing I wouldn’t hear from them for several months.

I was hanging out with a number of other young guys who were at loose ends, drinking coffee and walking around town, sitting on benches around the courthouse trying to figure out the meaning of life. Going out with a waitress out at the truckstop when she got off work at midnight. A young woman with goals, and confidence that no matter what a man might want for himself, she could mold him into something more to her liking. Once she got him nailed down on all the corners.

The World Fair was going on in New York that year. I could feel the walls of Portales trying to close in on me, and the guys I’d been spending spare time with were mostly thinking of themselves as beatniks, to the extend a person could be a beatnik in Portales. A slight beard and a beret went a long way in that direction. Sketchpad and a piece of charcoal, or a lot of free-verse poems jotted on cafe napkins were the tools.

So another aspiring beatnik, Stan Sexton, and I, decided to hitch to beatnik heaven. Check out the World Fair. Visit a couple of New Yorker weekend beatniks who went to Eastern New Mexico University, but were home in Westchester that summer.

I’ve told elsewhere on this blog about that summer, about sleeping on the Brooklyn Bridge, about catching the freight-train out late-August, jail in Rochester, and eventually hitching, driving the school bus to California, etc. About all those would-be beatnik women and the “Eh? YOU don’t believe in free love?” pickup line that always worked.

When I was accepted for Peace Corps Training and headed out of New York I had no idea I was seeing the dying gasp of the Beatnik phase everywhere. That a year later everyone who was anyone would be Hippy. That Greenwich Village would be replaced by San Francisco as the center of ‘what’s happening in America’. Kids would be burning their draft-cards and taking acid trips. Doing ‘Love-ins’ in the park.

By the time I got back to Portales to spend my time waiting for the Peace Corps India X training to begin in Hawaii the world had begun a sea-change, though it didn’t know it.

But at least some of the pressure was off in Portales. The waitress had found someone else with better prospects for a bright future. Cotton farmer, he turned out to be, if I remember correctly.

Tastefully tattooed on the inside of the thigh of the Goldilox behind me in line at Walmart. She saw me trying to read it and lifted her leg to make it easier. “Awsome?”

“I’ve seen worse.” I was a lot younger and mostly drunk, but a number worse ones still came to mind.

She frowned at meand I squinted my brain trying to figure out just what the hell “Texas Gals Kick Ass” could be intended to communicate to readers. Luckily the cashier interrupted. “You want the two-year return plan for $5 more?”

Me grabbing for straws welcoming any distraction, “Yeah. Sure.”

A person gets a statement tattooed anywhere there’s bound to be meaning hiding in it. Something intended to happen in the mind of the person who sees it. From now until she’s my age.

Hell, maybe she’s into Kung Fu, or plays soccor. Maybe she’s a wild-burro rider on the rodeo circuit. I was surprised by the ‘gals’ part… wasn’t my impression young women today would sit still for being called gals.

The ‘Texas’ part? I count it a relief.

I honestly don’t like to think about gals outside Texas going around kicking ass, or saying they do. Thinking they do.

Old Ms. Niaid managed to off Brother Rattler without any consequences evidently, so she’s going to have to find something else to flesh out her life experience, I reckons. Her long hair’s growing back from the sheep shearing when the hot weather hit, and it’s filling up with beggar’s lice and grass burrs, which might serve to fend off whatever’s around here dangerous to aging bachelorette felines.

Ms. Tabby, on the other hand, has a nose and front-of-her-face of the usual Tabby-summertime variety. Can’t keep her nose out of cactus, or out of the business of something capable of adding color and romance to an otherwise nondescript Tabby face. I’m thinking when we get out of here she might turn out to be a regular-looking cat.

I decided yesterday I’m going to add mothballs to that storage building to get those rattlers out where they can enjoy life instead of bickering and snarling inside that dark storage building. Can’t tell when someone’s going to want something else out of there and the anxiety level trying to find it ain’t worth not stepping on a snake some night going from the RV to the cabin to check my email.

Today I’m going to nurse the Escape Route V 2.51 into Kerrville on three tires on back and have the two blown ones replace with respectable 10 ply exceptions to the rule. Provided the spare on the ground right-rear doesn’t decide to blow the plan. I’ll try to take back roads and get the roadwork done early before the pavement gets too hot.

Keith emailed me a while back he’s planning to be in New Mexico late August or September, and I’m going to tentatively plan on getting out to visit while he’s in the area. Hopefully by then everything will be settled out here and I’ll be able to think of out-there as home for a while.

Maybe get me a nice little piece of ocean-side ground on the east, or west coast of New Mexico, once all the damned ice goes away and raises sea-level to a reasonable altitude. 4000′ mean sea level might be about right. Maybe the cats and I will open a little bait shop on the west coast near where Arizona used to be. Or maybe rig a surfboard and hang ten mornings after we pray the sun up.

I figure the west coast will probably be less jam packed with Arizonians than the east coast will be with Texans because those Texans already all go to New Mexico deliberately to ski and gamble at Ruidoso and Angel Fire. Arizonians and Californians never go to New Mexico deliberately unless they’re just going through it to get somewhere else.

By the time they wake up and discover they’re living in a salt-water swimming hole I’ll have things nailed down on all the corners, wave to them as they swim to shore, or ride in on their bass boats. Sell them some bait, maybe.

Gale had a hip replaced recently, and he’s doing the recovery routines. Called me a few days ago asking me to search around in one of the storage buildings for a wheel chair and walkers stored in there somewhere. I used to store chicken feed in there and hadn’t looked inside much after I got rid of the flock.

So I opened the door and began clearing away all manner of things before the first rattler announced himself, followed by another somewhere on the other side of the path I was creating. I moved something else and a third, maybe a fourth kicked in to the orchestra.

I tippee-toed around and carefully got the wheel chair and walkers out without anything attaching itself to my leg, called him to let him know it’s all down here where it can be picked up. We discussed the plethora of rattlers, how to get them out of there. And whether I actually wanted to get them out of there before I’m ready to hit the pavement.

On reflection, I like them a good bit better in there than outdoors where they can get underfoot. My thought is I’ll leave them to themselves for a while if they’re happy there. When the time comes he can run them out with mothballs or ammonia. He’s thinking he’d like to try forcing them out the hole they came in and have people standing around to shoot them as they emerge. Which I want no part of. I mostly have no argument with pore old Brother Rattler. If he’ll leave me along I’m content leaving him alone, tending his own affairs.

However, half-hour ago I was inside the RV when Niaid announced she’d come on prey, or caught something. I looked out the screen door and watched her leap on something in the weeds. Quicker than I can tell it she had a 3 foot rattler in her mouth dragging it toward the RV, meowing out the sides of her mouth as she came.

Brother Rattler was still trying to grasp the fact he was dead, his head and neck squashed. Squirming and wiggling between her forelegs as she brought him to show off.

I’m keeping a close eye on her. No way of telling yet whether she was bitten, but she seems okay. Not favoring any body parts.

Welcome

I’m sharing it with you because there’s almost no likelihood you’ll believe it. This lunatic asylum I call my life has so many unexpected twists and turns I won’t even try to guess where it’s going. I’d suggest you try to find some laughs here. You won’t find wisdom. Good luck.